Post Doc Fellow-Immunogenicity Prediction

MSD • Upper Gwynedd Township, PA

2d • $82,000 - $92,000

About The Position

The Computational Toxicology group within Nonclinical Drug Safety seeks a Postdoctoral Fellow to advance AI/ML and structure-based approaches for immunogenicity prediction in biologic and peptide therapeutics. The Fellow will develop computational methods combining protein structure modeling, immunoinformatics, and multimodal machine learning to improve prediction of biologically relevant immune responses. This is a publication-oriented, two-year fellowship with strong mentorship and extensive cross-functional and external academic collaboration. The Fellow will publish first-author manuscripts, present at scientific conferences, and help establish reusable, well-documented computational capabilities for translational safety assessment.

Requirements

• Must currently hold a Ph.D. or receive a Ph.D. no later than spring 2027.
• Ph.D. in computational immunology, computational biology, computational chemistry, structural biology, bioinformatics, or a closely related field.
• Strong hands-on experience with co-folding models (e.g., AlphaFold2/Boltz2), multimer modeling, or related structure-based computational methods.
• Experience with molecular dynamics simulation and analysis of biomolecular systems, complexes, or conformational behavior.
• Strong software development skills in Python and modern deep-learning frameworks such as PyTorch, with sound practices in version control, reproducibility, and scientific computing.
• Working knowledge of immunology relevant to immunogenicity prediction, including antigen processing and presentation, MHC/HLA biology, CD4⁺ T-cell recognition, and anti-drug antibody responses.
• Comfort working in HPC/GPU and cloud computing environments.
• Excellent scientific communication skills and a strong first-author publication record.

Nice To Haves

• Experience applying computational methods to immunology, structural biology, or protein science problems.
• Familiarity with antigen processing and presentation, MHC/HLA biology, or related immune recognition concepts.
• Experience with data integration, biological dataset curation, and programmatic workflows using public resources and APIs.
• Familiarity with uncertainty quantification, model calibration, and rigorous benchmarking.
• Familiarity with biotherapeutic developability, protein engineering, or related optimization concepts.
• Exposure to immunoinformatics, peptide modeling, or related predictive methods.

Responsibilities

• Curate, integrate, and harmonize biological, structural, and clinical datasets from public and internal sources into reproducible analysis workflows.
• Develop computational methods for immunogenicity prediction by integrating sequence, structural, and experimental data.
• Apply structure-based modeling and simulation approaches to characterize biomolecular interactions and conformational behavior relevant to immune recognition.
• Build and benchmark multimodal machine-learning models combining sequence, structural, and tabular data into robust, calibrated predictors.
• Evaluate model performance against established approaches and assess generalizability across therapeutic modalities.
• Contribute to first-author manuscripts and scientific presentations at internal forums and external conferences.
• Collaborate with computational, biology, and experimental scientists, and deliver reproducible, well-documented code, analyses, and models.

Benefits

• Annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.
• Medical, dental, vision, healthcare, and other insurance benefits for employees and family.
• Retirement benefits, including 401(k).
• Paid holidays, vacation, compassionate days, and sick days.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Intern
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree